I think a good chunk of and maybe most of humanity’s impact on wild animals comes through food production (agriculture, fishing), and animal products require more crop production per calorie or gram of protein than plant products. So, if humanity’s net impact on wild animals is to reduce their populations, and this is good, then it seems more likely than not that supporting veg*ism and alt proteins increases wild animal populations, and this is bad.
This is not meant to be a reductio against the view. I take this argument seriously, so mostly support welfare reforms, which I expect to have smaller in magnitude wild animal effects (relative to their farmed animal effects) and tend less in either direction in particular for wild animals. And I think we should do more research on the wild animal effects of diet.
I think a good chunk of and maybe most of humanity’s impact on wild animals comes through food production (agriculture, fishing), and animal products require more crop production per calorie or gram of protein than plant products. So, if humanity’s net impact on wild animals is to reduce their populations, and this is good, then it seems more likely than not that supporting veg*ism and alt proteins increases wild animal populations, and this is bad.
This is not meant to be a reductio against the view. I take this argument seriously, so mostly support welfare reforms, which I expect to have smaller in magnitude wild animal effects (relative to their farmed animal effects) and tend less in either direction in particular for wild animals. And I think we should do more research on the wild animal effects of diet.
FWIW, Brian Tomasik seemed pretty uncertain about this: https://reducing-suffering.org/vegetarianism-and-wild-animals/.